Fenerbahce’s fans angered by the media before the match versus FC Vaslui

“Earthquake with world-class match fixers! A nightmare expects FC Vaslui when they’ll play Fenerbahce” – This is the title that created a huge scandal in Turkey, after the article written by Gazeta Sporturilor was presented by the Istanbul media outlets. I cannot know what the Turkish press wrote, but I can guess that they’ve speculated a title that is bombastic as usual and, again as usual, has little to do with the article itself.

I’ll go through the piece, with an accurate translation / presentation of each phrase:

“Rocked by a match fixing scandal in the previous season and with one title won in the last five seasons, Vaslui’s opponent compensates with the fantastic atmosphere on Sukru Sarioglu and the stars Kuyt, Topal and Alex.

Fener was excluded last season from the Champions League by UEFA, but now enters the competition as runners-up in the Turkish league. The coach Aykut Kocaman rotated the team’s stars this summer: the loans of Ziegler and Yobo ended, Emre went to Atletico Madrid and Dia plays now in Qatar, but in Istanbul arrived the likes of Mehmet Topal, Dirk Kuyt and Kaldirim.

The top veterans create a tsunami at home

The team’s spine is formed by players that are already established: the keeper Demirel, 55 caps for Turkey, the Brazilian captain Alex, the Senegalese Sow, brought from Lille for 8,8 mil. Euros, plus other three players with around 100 games for Fener each: Senturk, Topuz and Selcuk. Not to mention the Slovakian talent Stoch, who comes from Chelsea.

At home, Fener is like an unleashed beast, with just one defeat in the last 32 official games and can impose a terrible pace to the game: under Kocaman, there’s an average of 2,1 goals scored per match.

Below, a presentation of what follows if Vaslui manages to go through or if the Romanian side will be eliminated.

The article ends with some info on Fenerbahce, as follows: Kocaman is in charge since 2010, while Vaslui changed 3 coaches since then; the Kadikoy area from Istanbul has 700.000 people, 10 times more than the entire city of Vaslui; “The yellow and black hell” has been built in 1908 and improved in 1999; Fener won 18 titles, while Vaslui has spent only 7 years in the Romanian first division”.

As you can see, apart from the title – which might not even belong to the author – and an objective, based on facts, mention about the match fixing scandal, the article praises Fener’s strength and shows the big gap between the two teams that will meet in the Champions League’s preliminary rounds… Still, that title was enough for the Turkish media to blow everything out of proportion and if my Twitter feed has been “on fire” on this topic, you can imagine what happens on Turkish forums…

The Fenerbahce fans are very angry about this and, as usual, several scenarios have appeared. It goes from “it’s an article paid by Galatasaray’s board” to “I’ve heard that the editor of that website is the nephew of Gica Popescu, who played for Galatasaray”. Popescu, who is only in his early 40’s…

So this is what a stupid, bombastic title in Romania – who, by the way, has had for years a league where match fixing has been quite a common practice! – speculated by the Turkish media can do to Fener’s fans, who are talking about the un-finished trial, the effect on the stock exchange, the reactions of their rival fans and, of course, “a real crime”, without realizing that they are tricked – once again – by the press, who remains desperate to make everything it takes to gather more clicks and to sell more papers…

I apologize to all the Fenerbahce fans. The meaning of my title was – It will be a great match for a small team like Vaslui, against a big team like Fener, so it will be an earthquake. Despite the fact that Fener was disqualified last year by UEFA for fixed-mathces, they still have 7 stars football players (Alex, Topal, Sow). This was the idea, i am not against Fener.
The turkish press took only the title of my article and made a big show from it. If you will read the entire article you will see that is just a small presentation of Fenerbahce, with squad, budget, football players. That is all.

I even like Fener, the only turkish team football match that I saw live was a Fener-Ankaraspor, some years ago, on Sukru Saracoglu.
I am really sorry if you are offended, It was not my intention. I apologize to to all Fener fans.

The idea of my article was to make a short presentation of Fenerbahce for the Romanians:

1. the fact that they are great club, so the match will be for Vaslui like an earthquake
2. the fact that Fener had problems in the European Cups last season, meaning that UEFA disqualified them from Champions League. I NEVER SAID THAT FENER IS A TEAM THAT FIXES MATCHES, only that IT IS CONSIDERED TO BE LIKE THAT AFTER THE UEFA DECISION. And reading the entire article it’s enough to understand this.
3. 7 stars means that it has football players of 7 stars. And exactly after the title I wrote their names: Alex, Topal, etc.

I repeat, it was not my intention to offend anyone. It was a big misunderstanding and if it is necessary I will try to publish a correction news, because this is the truth. Of course, I am just a jurnalist and I work for a newspaper so I do not decide over every detail of my work, and this is usual and normal in every newspaper’s workflow. For exemple, the title used for the web edition is even slightly DIFFERENT from the one used in the paper edition. And this things are not always decided by the journalist who wrote the article.

Radu Baicu

• 10 years of continuous work in scouting, for top clubs and companies;
• Worked for clubs like Bayer 04 Leverkusen and Hannover 96, monitorring the Romanian market;
• Worked for Birmingham based company 'The Scouting Network' (www.tsn.co.uk) as a football scout;
• Worked for Zurich based company Boutique Football as a scouting network coordinator;
• International scout for Young Boys Bern for 2 years, covering Eastern European football.
• Currently working as an international scout for a top French club, covering Eastern European football.